Saturday, July 30, 2011

Cars 2 Review

For 25 years now, the animation company Pixar has been making quality movies, from “Toy Story” to “Up” and all of them for the most part have been extraordinary. However, nobody’s perfect. From time to time even the animation powerhouse will make a movie that doesn’t meet the expectations of their previous films.

This is the case with Pixar’s’ newest film “Cars 2” (directed by John Lasseter) which doesn’t have the humor or the heart to match up with Pixar’s other masterpieces. But the movie is still an impressive feat of animation and is better then most of the animated films to come out this year.

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and the rest of the characters from the original “Cars” are back in this action packed sequel which takes McQueen and Mater to the World Gran Prix, spanning [not spawning] over three different countries, Japan, Italy and England. Trouble arises when Mater gets mixed up with two British spies Finn McMissle (Michael Caine) and Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer) and some criminals try to sabotage the race.

The best thing about “Cars 2” and every other Pixar film is that it has some spectacular animation. The cars look very realistic and the racing scenes were some of the most exhilarating I have ever seen. Plus the animators captured the look and feel of Italy, London and Japan perfectly. And the best part is, that you don’t need to see it in 3D; it looks perfectly fine in regular D.

Now, on to the difficult part, the flaws in the film. The biggest problem with “Cars 2” is that the first “Cars” wasn’t that good to begin with and therefore didn’t need a sequel. It was enjoyable but the story wasn’t very compelling or funny.

Secondly, the main premise of the film revolves mostly around Mater and unfortunately Mater isn’t that funny or interesting. Having to listen to his same redneck jokes over and over again gets tiresome. I found myself wanting to see more of McQueen and the other characters.

So, even if it doesn’t rank among Pixar’s best, “Cars 2” is still a fun and entertaining joyride and in the end isn’t that what animation is about?